Gay Erotic Romance about the two loves in the life of the 19 year old protagonist. Steamy. Explicit sex and drug use. Not for easily offended. Some scenes are three-ways. Joey’s first love flourishes albeit in the closet together, and with some sexual kinks, and yields another deeper love, mature, and hot.

ISBN: 9781611526592 PRICE: $6.99 GENRE: Gay Erotic Romance LENGTH: 82,859 words RATING: flame rating 4Growing up, Joey has no gay role models. In the dim light of the early 1960s, Joey only knew what he picked up on the streets, at magazine stands, and in public restrooms. In his senior year in high school, he falls in love with Ross, a beautiful athletic “straight guy.” But once in college, his love life takes a turn.Ike, a flamboyant college freshman, turns Joey on to gay sex and the newly formed gay lib movement. But things don’t go well for Joey, and he fumbles through a few one-night stands and semi-relationships. After nearly losing Ike to a gay bashing, Joey gives up on love and turns his motorcycle toward New Orleans and the French Quarter, where he moves in with his bohemian cousin, Judy. Joey likes the gay scene in the Quarter but he is lonely, missing intimacy, and flails through life. The sexual nights in the French Quarter aren’t enough to satisfy his real needs -- but his resourceful cousin magically opens the door for him to have the best of both worlds.

A Review by Amos Lassen.

Campbell, Jacob. “Two Loves”, JMS Books, 2014.Back to the ’60sAmos LassenJacob Campbell (Amen’s Boy and French Quarter Knights) takes us to New Orleans in the 1960s, a time before gay liberation when being gay was secret. The same beautiful language that we loved in his earlier books, still characterizes Campbell’s writing and character creation.Joey grew up in a world without gay role models and all he knew about being gay was based on man/man sex—what he picked up on the streets, at magazine stands, and in public restrooms. When he was a senior in high school, he fell in love with Ross, a beautiful athletic “straight guy.” But then there was college where everything changed. There Joey met flamboyant Ike who not only turned him on to gay sex but also to the newly formed gay liberation movement.Joey, however, has a difficult time and he has a few unsuccessful one-nighters and a couple of semi-relationships. To make things even worse, Ike is gay bashed and was nearly gone. Joey decides to give up on looking for love and turns his motorcycle toward New Orleans and the French Quarter, where he moves in with his bohemian cousin, Judy.Even though he likes the scene in the French Quarter, Joey is lonely and there is no intimacy in his life. The sexuality of the New Orleans nights in the French Quarter isn’t enough to satisfy his real needs. Judy is able to help him by opening the doors that will provide him with the best of both worlds.Thanks to Joey, we are taken on a sensual exploration of a young gay man’s love of a straight classmate, with all the complexities of sex with “a straight guy” and the ultimate frustration of trying to develop a rewarding emotional relationship. The eighteen year old “boyfriends” go through many of the traditional rights of passage but ultimately, Joey, the protagonist, has to face the facts about loving a straight guy. Joey then meets Ike and romance ensues with the two guys discovering their homosexuality with each other.The prose is gorgeous and at times poetic. Joey is a wonderfully drawn character who is torn between the sex trade and love for another man. We must remember that at the time this novel is set, homosexuality was taboo in many places in the world but especially here in America. Joey and Ike had not turned 20 years old when they began to act on their sexualities.Jacob Campbell, with poetic prose, and many vibrant images shows how Joey struggles to discover a way of life as a homosexual man in a world that is not open. As they learn who they are, they find themselves on a journey of life— from dancing in musicals on the college summer stage together in a chorus line, to riding Joey’s motorcycle to redneck bars in the hillbilly countryside of 1960’s Little Rock, to actually working as a team hustling guys they pick up in dark so-called “gay bars”—these young men discover that violence, misunderstanding, and lack of family or social support plot against them and their desire to be a lasting couple. It was only when Joey’s bohemian, “beat” or “beatnik” cousin, Judy, takes him in to live in her French Quarter home that Joey finds there is a larger world of openly homosexual men from whom he can expect to gain support. It was only through her loving support that he could find supportive means to set out on a mission to be both a faithful lover to young Ike. Joey also fulfills his life’s dream of becoming a writer working in the gay movement. This was where he discovered himself the early gay underground of New Orleans in the 60s. I have watched Campbell’s writing mature with each book and he has hit a peak with “Two Loves” yet I am certain that there is still more to come. He has the ability to combine our history with his fiction thus allowing us to enjoy a read and learn something at the same time. There are not many authors I can say that about.

EXCERPT: Note: may contain sexually explicit scenes of a homoerotic nature.I was a goner from the first moment we met.Ike was a kind and gentle man, a tender person. He was cheerful and talkative, and cared nothing for the fact that his gestures and speech mannerisms gave him away as a man who liked other men. In my earlier life, in high school, I’d fallen in love with a classmate who had similar atypical gestures and mannerisms for a boy. It wasn’t that Ike had girlish ways, but he lacked a macho stiltedness and his movements were spontaneous in all situations, with a sort of ballet-like gracefulness.In the privacy of Ike’s room, we began kissing and his lanky frame seemed to wrap around mine. We kissed a long time before we moved our hands around exploring. We just hugged, kissed, and stared into one another’s eyes. The sensation of a fast fall into love was unmistakable. I was totally enchanted.Hours into our private time in Ike’s bedroom, we took each other’s shirts off, and rubbed and kissed each other’s chest, stomach, and explored everything -- nipples, armpits, the long muscles of Ike’s neck and our hugging was wonderful.We talked between kisses.“You are so beautiful,” he whispered in my ear. His golden red stubble rasped on my cheek and our naked bodies folded into one another, soft accepting hard, hard pressing soft. “You smell so wonderful.”It was so good to hear what he said. I felt so ugly lately, beyond ugly, and here he was telling me the opposite.I spoke to him in whispers, “You are so elegant, so sleek, so strong and tight ... like a gymnast. What do you do?”His dancer’s physique was a rush to touch, and we seemed to reach some sort of excitation crescendo mid-afternoon. We withheld actual sex all this time. We accumulated desire. We built anticipation. Our pants were tossed aside with wet spots in the fronts, and new heightened arousal as our skin in private parts of our bodies began to meet for the first time.“Slow.” Ike whispered. “Go slow, make this last.”“This is bliss.” Our voices so soft as to be almost inaudible, but we agreed to pause and savor this blissful threshold.We were glowing and all I can say is that I fell in love with Ike again every instant as if this capitulating to his charm held new surrender each and every new moment.He fell in love with me, too. It was impossibly fast in a sense, but what delays we experienced seemed to deepen our love. The emotions were unmistakable as love; but there wasn’t anything in my life’s experience that would have prepared me accept or to resist such a force of attraction. I was full, overflowing, joyful, and a roaring underground river flowed with warmth and majesty deeply within me carrying with it new love. New love flowed tangibly through us both.Love at first sight unfolded like a lotus flower unfolds. Waves of excited blissful affection washed over us.The sound of Ike’s voice whispering in my ear, the breath gently flowing past my ear and gently moving my hair…the clenching of our arms around one another -- everything was exquisite.Somehow in my mind I remembered a past time when once I meditated at a botanical garden early one morning, and saw a lotus bud closed, but poised for opening at daybreak. I sat beside the pond, assumed the full lotus posture, and gazed unblinkingly at the purple and lime colored bud. It seem not to move from moment to moment but after a short while the petals expanded into a flower, and in a short time the lotus was fully opened. I felt the magic of natural unfolding from bud to flower as a parallel to this time in Ike’s room, in Ike’s arms.